Plastic silos – Recommendations for safe operation

Material fatigue and/or overloading can cause a collapse of tower silos of glass fiber reinforced plastic. As the silos are designed mainly for the relatively coarse-fibred grass and maize silages, the danger of collapse increases when the silo is filled with products of a high density, such as sugar beet pulp, coarse meal of maize ears or wet chopped grass. A collapse usually starts at the bottom unloading hatch.